Читать книгу History of Fresno County, Vol. 4 - Paul E. Vandor - Страница 26

Now one of the successful promoters of Fresno, Guy Stockton has gained that position through sheer enterprise and grit. The genealogy of the Stockton family can be traced back to Sir Richard Stockton, a Scotch-Irish nobleman, the progenitor from whom all of that name have descended. The Stocktons have played a prominent part in the history of California, the city of Stockton being named after one of the family.

Guy Stockton was born on January 26, 1880, in New Mexico, on the divide between that country and Colorado. His father died when he was but a small child, and his mother later married N. C. Caldwell, an attorney-at-law, and moved to Fresno in March, 1887. Guy attended the Fresno public schools as far as the seventh grade, when he called his education completed and started on his up-hill climb toward success in life. As early as seven years of age he began selling papers on the streets of Fresno, the Expositor and the Fresno Republican. Afterwards he worked at odd jobs to earn a living; in the Clovis Planing Mill for seventy-five cents per day; in a dairy for eight dollars per month and board; then as delivery boy and clerk for Melvin & Blaney; for H. Graff, the grocer; for Kutner-Goldstein Company; and in the fruit packing houses. His first real start up the ladder came when he entered the bee business. He went into Kern County and leased an apiary on shares, making $500 the first season. With this as his capital, he came to Fresno and bought 100 hives of bees and ten acres of land, on Church Avenue, paying $300 for his first real estate, which he still owns. Here he set to work with enthusiasm and produced, bought and sold honey on a large scale. He was a member, from its organization, of the local Beekeepers' Association, and at one time its secretary.

In 1907, Mr. Stockton started in the real estate business, his first sale being a forty-acre orange grove at Centerville for $26,000, which opened his eyes and gave him an insight into what could be accomplished in that line.

He was the first man to develop north-end property. Buying five-acre lots, he subdivided these and sold them off in one-acre lots. He sold lots in Sunnyside Gardens, Baker Heights, Recreation Park Tract, and Boyd's Addition. In 1917, Mr. Stockton built sixteen houses in Fresno. They were sold before being completed, and the call for houses has continued as good since. One five-acre piece of land near the Normal School is full of houses erected by Mr. Stockton. He became exclusive agent, in September, 1917, for the Peerless Orchards Company, and has sold 400 acres of their properties in twenty-acre to forty-acre lots. The Peerless Fig Orchards are located near Clovis. The soil is especially adapted to the growing of Calimyrna figs, now one of the important industries of Fresno County. Mr. Stockton is the owner of an eighty-acre Calimyrna fig orchard in the Peerless tract; and he also owns eighty acres of unimproved land situated one mile east of Lane Station, and 160 acres on the west side, besides the ten acres where he originally had his bees. In addition to these real estate, holdings, he owns valuable city property in Fresno. A man of unusual enterprise and vigorous energy, Mr. Stockton has been remarkably successful in his work as a promoter of real estate in the county. He specializes in suburban property, and can without exaggeration be called one of the real builders of Fresno. It is to such men as Mr. Stockton that the county owes its phenomenal growth of the past decade, and its rank as one of the most prosperous counties of California.

Mrs. Stockton was in maidenhood Florence Brocklebank, a native of Freehold, N. J. She is a cultured and refined woman, possessed of rare business acumen, and is actively assisting her husband in his enterprises. By his former marriage Mr. Stockton has two sons, Frank R. and Norman.